Football Teams with the Most Expensive Tickets

Tickets to a New York Giants 2013 home game are the most expensive in the NFL. The Chicago Bears and the New England Patriots have the second and third most expensive tickets.

While teams sell tickets directly, there is a thriving secondary market of tickets. Sources such as Stubhub, eBay and TicketNetwork.com SeatGeek, and many others provide a marketplace for fans to buy and sell tickets. The secondary market is more reflective of current demand.

Event ticket search engine SeatGeek provided 24/7 Wall St. with the current average secondary-market ticket prices for each team for the 2013 NFL season. Based on the data, the average 2013 game for several teams costs more than $200. Home games for the New York Giants cost $292.36

Most of the teams with the most expensive tickets have been successful in their recent seasons. Winning teams attract more people to the games and drive up ticket prices. Teams that make this list, including the New England Patriots, the Green Bay Packers and the Baltimore Ravens, are playoff contenders nearly every year. Of the 10 most recent Super Bowl champions, only one is not on this list of teams with the most expensive tickets.

According to SeatGeek representative Will Flaherty, the other teams to make this list, like the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos, have had recent surges in success and popularity, which have clearly driven up prices. The average secondary-market ticket for a Seahawks game in 2011 was $93.91. In 2012, the Seahawks displayed a dominant defense and were led by exciting rookie quarterback Russell Wilson. The average ticket price for the 2013 Seahawk season is $220.64, more than double the 2011 season ticket price.

The cost of secondary-market tickets is determined also by their original, primary market price. This, explained Flaherty, can be affected by the costs of living in the different cities. New York, Boston and Seattle, home to three of the most expensive teams, have among the highest costs of living in the country. In comparison, cities with the cheapest average football tickets — Cleveland, Jacksonville and St. Louis — have much lower costs of living.

Still, cost of living is not everything, Flaherty noted. Green Bay is not a particularly expensive market, but the waiting list for tickets is in the hundreds of thousands. “The Packers have insatiable demand, with a ticket waiting list of over 100,00 fans.” This more than makes up for the less expensive market. At the same time, New York Jets games are among the cheapest tickets. This is despite the fact that Jets home games are held in MetLife stadium, the same stadium that the team with the most expensive ticket, the New York Giants, also calls home.

In order to identify the NFL teams with the most expensive tickets, event ticket search engine SeatGeek provided 24/7 Wall St. with the current average secondary-market ticket prices for each team for the 2013 NFL season. 24/7 Wall St. reviewed team record and attendance data from ESPN. We also reviewed city cost of living data as of the first quarter of 2013 from the Council for Community and Economic Research. All ticket prices listed are secondary-market ticket averages, provided by SeatGeek.